This Is Me

A Story of Who We Are and Where We Came From

From the #1 New York Times bestselling creative team of Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell comes a timely picture book about immigration. Raising important identity issues like “Where did we come from?” and “Who are we?” This Is Me is as delightful as it is important, sure to stimulate dinner table conversation.

In This Is Me a teacher tells her class about her great-grandmother’s dislocating journey from home to a new country with nothing but a small suitcase to bring along. And she asks: What would you pack? What are the things you love best? What says “This is me!” With its lively, rhyming language and endearing illustrations, it’s a book to read again and again, imagining the lives of the different characters, finding new details in the art, thinking about what it would be like to move someplace completely different.

It’s an interactive book, too: Tucked into the back cover is a sturdy pop-up suitcase. And as a younger reader fills the suitcase, he or she learns a lot about what really matters: Now YOU take this case/ and imagine it’s true,/ that you’re leaving and needing/ to choose what says YOU.

“Kids will find Curtis’ “to know yourself, you must know your roots” message resonant and will be scrambling to fill the pop-up suitcase at the back of the book with items that say to the world, “HI THERE, THIS IS ME!” An excellent springboard for school-age kids to discover who they are and where they come from. ” —Kirkus Reviews

“Jamie Lee Curtis has a knack for simplifying complex topics...and interpreting them in a way children can easily understand...Her latest title, This Is Me: A Story of Who We Are & Where We Came From (Workman Publishing) is about emigration, immigration, and the idea of leaving the old behind for the promise of the new. It’s a celebration of diversity and self, helping young children to begin the process of discovering what makes them unique and what connects all of us together.” —Story Monsters Ink

“To Curtis’ clever, thoughtful verses, Cornell makes sure every page is enhanced with entertainment and education both – from pop culture icons to the surly older teenage sibling to bookish devotions to cultural lessons and beyond. That the book then becomes an introspective, deeply contemplative interactive adventure by the final spread is a gift to every young (and not so youthful, ahem) reader indeed.” —The BookDragon(Smithsonianpa.org)